Author Topic: Connecting NASA wireless wind to Raymarine Seatalk  (Read 2980 times)

Salty

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Connecting NASA wireless wind to Raymarine Seatalk
« on: January 06 2019, 20:38 »
I gave up on repairs and renewals and being charged for work not actually carried out on my Raymarine Wind Instrument a couple of years ago, and bought a NASA Wireless Wind instrument which was fitted to the masthead a couple of years ago. Apart from occasionally loosing the WiFi signal where I have installed the receiver inside the wardrobe in the aft starboard cabin on my B36(2002), the instrument has otherwise worked faultlessly and has withstood the storm force winds that last year hit Anglesey and dismantled Holyhead Marina with some spectacular vengeance. That aside, as I said it has worked as well if not better than I had hoped for. I know that the WiFi receiver sends an NMEA0183 sentence (MWV if I remember correctly), to its own display unit where it uses a cable consisting of red, black and yellow covered wire cores. My guess is that the red and black cables carry 12 volts + and - to the display instrument while the yellow wire carries the NMEA sentence. I would like if possible to connect these wires, one or more of them to my original Raymarine Seatalk system in order for it to feed into a Raymarine display instrument that has the ability to display one or other of the various feeds that link into the Seatalk system such as depth, speed or wind when the original Raymarine wind instrument was working (not very often !!!).

Does anyone have any hands on knowledge of connecting a NASA wireless wind instrument WiFi receiver to Raymarine Seatalk with any success. My Seatalk system is already powered with a 12 volt connection so I’m guessing that it won’t need an additional 12 volt supply from the the new wind instrument, so can I just connect the yellow data cable from the wireless receiver to the data cable within the Seatalk system ?

tiger79

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Re: Connecting NASA wireless wind to Raymarine Seatalk
« Reply #1 on: January 07 2019, 10:21 »
You need an interface which translates NMEA0183 to SeaTalk.  Raymarine made one, the E85001, which is now out of production but you can still find them on eBay.

Salty

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Re: Connecting NASA wireless wind to Raymarine Seatalk
« Reply #2 on: January 07 2019, 10:51 »
Ok, thank you.

Yngmar

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Re: Connecting NASA wireless wind to Raymarine Seatalk
« Reply #3 on: January 07 2019, 12:28 »
There's a few third party alternatives to the Raymarine box, which can be hard to find:

https://digitalyacht.co.uk/product/st-nmea-iso/

https://www.quark-elec.com/onlinemall/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=86

There used to be another one from gadgetpool.de, but the site appears to be offline now.

If you want to go deeper into it or build your own, this page on the OpenCPN wiki is a good start:

https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:supplementary_hardware:seatalk_nmea

Oh, and some Raymarine kit (notably chartplotters) do have NMEA0183 inputs as well, so depending on what equipment you have, you may simply be able to use that. The plotter will then do the conversion internally and without additional equipment. Have a look at the manual.
(formerly) Sailing Songbird  ⛵️ Bavaria 40 Ocean (2001)

Salty

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Re: Connecting NASA wireless wind to Raymarine Seatalk
« Reply #4 on: January 07 2019, 14:27 »
Thanks Yngmar for all of your information. However for what those conversion systems cost, and for the convenience of having a display somewhere other than at the helm, arguably the least cost option would be to buy an additional NASA wind display instrument, about £85 new, and place it next to the existing Raymarine multi display instrument, or even move the binnacle display to somewhere wher it would be visible to all or anyone within the cockpit area of the boat.
I had hoped that a simple wire to wire connection was all that was needed, but I didn’t want to risk causing damage where none existed. At the end of the day I’ve had a lot of practice at estimating wind speed and direction from the sea condition, so I think I’ll leave well alone and just take a quick look at the binnacle display if I really need confirmation.
Thanks again for your help.